Xiang’s talk, “The Intermediary Trap: International Labour Recruitment, Transnational Governance and State-Citizen Relations in China,” will take place Nov. 5 at 519 91��ɫ Research Tower, Keele campus. A reception will begin at 2:30pm, followed by the lecture at 3pm. Everyone is welcome to attend the event hosted by the 91��ɫ Centre of Asian Research (YCAR).

Xiang Biao

“Dr. Xiang is a young and exciting anthropologist working on migration in Asia. His work comprises detailed ethnographic studies in multiple contexts including India, China, Singapore, Korea, Japan and Australia. He epitomizes the 'open' and 'non-territorial' concept of Asia-as-region that we espouse at YCAR,” says Philip F. Kelly, YCAR director.

Xiang’s forthcoming book Making Order from Transnational Mobility (Princeton University Press) is the result of four years of field research across East Asia.

Beyond the appeal of Xiang's pan-Asian ethnographies, his work on the transnational governance regimes that regulate migration will also be of interest to a wide range of scholars at 91��ɫ, says Kelly.

Xiang’s lecture will trace how transnationally-linked commercial labor recruiters gain a dominant position in cultivating, facilitating and controlling migration.  These intermediaries render themselves indispensable both for migrating workers and for the states seeking to make order from migration.

The intermediary trap is more dynamic and complex than a simple “capture” by identifiable interest groups and is deeply implicated in changing state-citizen relations in China. Rooted in Chinese and other Asian states’ agenda to liberalize socioeconomic life without compromising sovereign power, the intermediary trap may become a worldwide phenomenon with the resurgence of state power alongside a continuing neoliberal hegemony beyond Asia.

Through its Asia Lecture Series, YCAR showcases some the best of scholarship on Asia and initiates discussion in both academic and non-academic communities about major issues relating to Asia in a global context.

For more information about YCAR, visit the YCAR website.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin to research stories on the research website.

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Raffles will deliver a special guest lecture today titled, "Rocks, Stones & Other Vital Things" as part of the fourth annual lecture hosted by the Department of Anthropology at 91��ɫ. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be held in the Founders College Senior Common Room, 305 Founders College at 4:30pm.

Right: Professor Hugh Raffles

Raffles will speak about his new ethnographic project that explores the lives of rocks and stones. There are currently two central problems that anthropologists face. The first is familiar to anthropologists: What are the forms of life enacted by objects that, in the Western philosophical tradition, are commonly considered inanimate? The second, although related, may be less familiar: What can we learn from stones? Raffles explores these questions ethnographically, assuming that they are susceptible to empirical investigation. His research considers a limited set of cases, two of which are introduced in this talk: the ancient monuments of the British Isles and the Chinese "scholar's rocks".

Professor Jody Berland of the Division of Humanities and the Graduate Program in Communications and Culture, and Professor Peter Timmerman of the Faculty of Environmental Studies will respond briefly to the talk before discussion is open to the public.

Raffles' research and writing on the cultural and historical anthropology of "nature" explores connections among people, other beings and "inanimate" phenomena. He is the author of Insectopedia (Pantheon Books, 2010) and In Amazonia: A Natural History (Princeton University Press, 2002).

The lecture is co-sponsored by the Department of Anthropology, the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, the Faculty of Education, the Faculty of Environmental Studies, and the Office of the Master of Founders College.

For more information, contact Margaret MacDonald at maggie@yorku.ca.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Participating in the panel are University of Western Ontario  Professor William Turkel; University of Toronto Professor Michelle Murphy; Queen's University Professor Sergio Sismundo; and 91��ɫ Professor Darrin Durant. It will be moderated by 91��ɫ anthropology Professor Natasha Myers.

A professor of history, Turkel is also the project director, for the Social Science & Humanities Research Council of Canada Strategic Knowledge Cluster . His research and teaching draws on, integrates and tries to extend a number of different disciplines, including environmental and public history, the histories of science and technology, 'big history', science and technology studies, computation, and studies of place and social memory.

Murphy's research interests include the history of technoscience, sex, gender, race, environmental politics and capitalism in the United States through transnational and post-colonial theoretical perspectives.  She is the author of Sick Building Syndrome and the Politics of Uncertainty: Environmental Politics, Technoscience and Women Workers (Duke University Press, 2006), which examines history of low-level exposures and the production of uncertainty in twentieth century American environmental politics, with a focus on labor and office buildings.

Sismundo's research explores the philosophical consequences of seeing science as a thoroughly social activity. He is examining how historical and sociological work on the practice of science affect our views of a diverse set of issues in the philosophy of science, from the realism/anti-realism debate to the scope of standpoint epistemologies.

Durant's primary field of research concerns nuclear waste disposal, specifically debates over technical assessments and policy-making priorities between credentialed experts, the lay public and social movements. His theoretical interests focus upon the links between topics in STS (such as lay public involvement in technical controversies) and political philosophy (such as different notions of democracy, the issue of minority and majority rights, the controversy over the role of social identities in democratic decision-making, the perils of counter-cultural thinking, and the unfortunate withering of the idea of a common good).

Meyers is an anthropologist working in the field of science and technology. Her research examines the lively visual cultures that thrive in contemporary life science laboratories and classrooms. She is curious about how laboratories operate as spaces for producing scientists and tracks how pedagogy and training shape forms of knowing, ways of seeing and modes of embodiment in the practical cultures of technoscience.

The panel is free and open to the community. For more information, visit the Science & Technology Studies website.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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For more than 1,400 years, Muslims have held multiple and diverging views about their religious tradition. Yet especially since Sept. 11, 2001, Muslims are commonly portrayed as homogeneous and dogmatic.

In his new book, , 91��ɫ anthropologist challenges that view. The 253-page volume published by I.B. Tauris and launched at Harvard University this fall features essays by world-class scholars that explore Islam and Muslim societies and cultures from a range of perspectives.

The book arose from a seminar series on Muslim pluralism hosted at the London-based Institute of Ismaili Studies in 2002 and 2003 in response to the events of Sept. 11, 2001, explains Hirji in his editor’s note. “Since that moment, words and images concerning Islam and the histories, beliefs and practices of Muslims have proliferated globally.”

This complex portrait of Islam “challenges the notions that Muslims everywhere are the same or should be the same,” wrote Hirji. Like the seminar series, the book aims not to present the social fact that Muslims are diverse, he added, but to examine how Muslims frame their own diversity over time and in different contexts.

As a social historian as well as an anthropologist in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, Hirji is interested in how Muslim societies express their sense of community. He has contributed the first of eight essays in Diversity and Pluralism in Islam, “Debating Islam from Within: Muslim Constructions of the Internal Other”.

Hirji co-authored and co-edited , a comprehensive account of Ismaili history and intellectual achievements, set in the wider contexts of Islamic and world history. He has co-edited Places of Worship and Devotion in Muslim Societies, expected out soon. He has also recently completed a 25-minute film on Tehreema Mitha (see YFile May 7, 2009), a classical and contemporary dancer from Pakistan, and is working with the Textile Museum of Canada on an exhibition of Muslim material culture and heritage in Africa to open in May.

Right: Zulfikar Hirji

At 91��ɫ, he teaches senior undergraduate and graduate courses on Islam and Muslim societies, visual anthropology and the anthropology of the senses.

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Left: Karl Schmid

The award recognizes Schmid's participation in Public Anthropology’s Community Action online project as well his wider activities in the public sphere. According to Robert Borofsky, director of the Center for Public Anthropology and a professor of anthropology at Hawaii Pacific University, less than one per cent of faculty teaching introductory anthropology courses across North America receive this award.

"Professor Schmid is to be commended for how he takes classroom knowledge and applies it to real-world challenges, thereby encouraging students to be responsible global citizens," says Borofsky. "In actively addressing important ethical concerns within anthropology, Professor Schmid is providing students with the thinking and writing skills needed for active citizenship. Congratulations to Professor Schmid, the Department of Anthropology and 91��ɫ on this honour."

Seven of Schmid's students .

Schmid’s research focuses on southern Egypt, especially Luxor, a city which is being rapidly transformed into a transnational tourism zone. Luxor (site of ancient Thebes) has been reconfigured as a World Heritage Site visited by more than five million tourists each year. Schmid documents how the rapid transformation of the city centre has been accomplished by tearing down dozens of public and residential buildings to recreate a 3,500-year-old "avenue of the sphinxes" between two major ancient Egyptian temples.

He is also a collaborator in supported by through the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada’s Major Collaborative Research Initiatives program. The project involves a team of international researchers conducting the first comprehensive, comparative analysis of urban expansion and the creation of suburbs in diverse locales around the world.

Among Schmid's recent publications is the article "Doing Ethnography of Tourist Enclaves: Boundaries, Ironies, and Insights" published in the journal Tourist Studies.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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That was the question 91��ɫ students in Professor ’s second-year Public Anthropology class addressed in their submissions to the – a North America-wide contest involving 4,000 students in 21 schools.

Seven students in Schmid's class won awards for their op-ed pieces, which debated the ultimate legacy of anthropological research. Their writings focused on the role of publicly-funded research conducted by cultural anthropologists and specifically addressed the ethical question: Should these researchers be held publicly accountable for explaining how those they study have benefited from their research?

The award winners are: Nicole Collver, Vanessa Fallone, Fatima Khan, Kate McFeeters, Amanda Mountford, Sardar Saadi and Colin Savoie.

Above: Seven 91��ɫ students are the winners of the 2010 Public Anthropology Competition. From left, Colin Savoie, Nicole Collver, Vanessa Fallone, Kate McFeeters, Amanda Mountford, Fatima Khan and Sardar Saadi

"Anthropology has a principle called 'Do no harm.'" says Schmid. "Students were asked to think it through and decide if they agreed with a position posed by anthropology Professor Robert Borofsky, director of the Public Anthropology Center in the United States. He asked if there should be a requirement for anthropologists at the end of their research to create a public statement outlining to what extent they have fulfilled the obligations that were laid out at the beginning of their research."

Students in Schmid's class had to construct their argument and write it in a non-academic style intended for publication in North American newspapers. The focus of the competition was to improve students’ critical thinking and writing skills.

Left: Karl Schmid

A contract faculty member in the Department of Anthropology in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies and a member of the City Institute, Schmid encourages his students to enter the competition. His course addresses the role of anthropology in the contemporary world and poses the question: How can anthropology apply its methods and insights to local and global problems of inequality, injustice and human suffering?

Competition award winners were judged by their student contemporaries across North America. Students were also graded separately for the course on the following critieria: a clear expression of the point of the article, persuasiveness, thoughtful organization, clarity and ease of comprehension by non-academic readers and, finally, a polite and respectful tone – as opposed to righteous indignation.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Published by Duke University Press, Homophobias looks at these questions through critical interrogations and analysis of diverse sites where homophobic discourses are produced, including New 91��ɫ City, Australia, the Caribbean, Greece, India and Indonesia, as well as American Christian churches. The idea is to uncover the complex operational processes of homophobias and their intimate relationships to nationalism, sexism, racism, class and colonialism.

In the book's preface, Murray notes that the term "homophobia" had moved into the global sphere. This got him thinking about the term's meaning and the existence of homophobia. "Homophobia had gone global, and to be accused of being homophobic was to be accused of something more than just not liking homosexuals; furthermore, this accusation now carried potentially serious economic and political repercussions." He hopes the book will be the initial step in answering some of the questions the term homophobia raises.

Left: David Murray

Murray gathered researchers from a diverse range of ethnographic sites "to demonstrate how homophobia is a phenomenon that has no centre or origin, but more importantly, to examine how, or if, a transnational, comparative and ethnographically informed perspective might extend, challenge or change our understandings of homophobia."

In part one – "Displacing Homophobia" – some of the issues the contributors examine include homophobia in New 91��ɫ's gay central, American Christian homophobia and homophobia as racism. In part two – "Transnational Homophobias" – they look at homosexual hate in Jamaica, political homophobia in Indonesia, as well as the Barbadian media. In examining these issues, Homophobias provides innovative analytical insights that expose the complex and intersecting cultural, political and economic forces contributing to the development of new forms of homophobia.

Murray, the director of the Graduate Program in Women’s Studies at 91��ɫ, is the author of .

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin

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Denning will be one of four co-presenters appearing in six one-hour-long episodes of the show "Beast Legends" which will involve her “romping around the world to study tales of legendary creatures.” The information gathered is then brought to the show's Beast Lab, where the creature is created in 3-D computer imagery before being unleashed in the modern world. “Beast Legends” is produced by Yap Films and will premiere on beginning tomorrow at 10pm and running for six weeks. In the fall, the series will air on Syfy.

Left: Kathryn Denning with the skull of an Australopithecus

As one of the show's “beast seekers”, Denning found herself scuba diving in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Fiji with dozens of bull sharks – one of the top three shark species prone to attacking humans – in search of clues to the Fijian shark god Dakuwaqa. Despite the risk of being attacked, she dove with locals without the use of a shark cage. She also tracked stories of the Navajo bird monster in New Mexico, and in France she recorded a recent eyewitness account by a sailor whose boat had been attacked by a giant squid, evoking the medieval tale of the kraken, a fierce multi-tentacled sea monster thought to crush ships and scoop men from ship decks.

The show poses questions like: If these beasts were here today, what would they be doing or eating and where would they be living? says Denning. “Then we bring the data together and create the beast as it would look and act if it was here today.” Bringing the ancient into the present and understanding the linkages between the two is a particular interest of Denning’s, which, to her delight, she got to exercise while on assignment. "I'm interested in how people think of the ancient world and how that gets used in the modern world." She also had the opportunity to explore what she calls a highly innovative yet traditional culture by staying with Fijians in their homes while shooting. She got to experience their culture first-hand and better understand their rapidly changing religious beliefs and how those connect with modern phenomena like ecotourism.ec

The local people believe the Fijian shark god, a former chief who became a god after his death, protects and watches over them. Dakuwaqa not only sees all, but can change shape at will, although his most prominent shape is that of a bull shark. In recent years, a local Fijian operation began regularly diving down to feed the bull sharks by hand without cages to allow spectators to see the animals barrier-free. “I got an astoundingly close look at these beautiful, majestic killing machines,” says Denning. The local shark-feeding specialists have no fear of being attacked. In fact, Denning says, “they have named many individual sharks, and in turn, the sharks seem to recognize these individual humans by smell.” So far there have been no incidents in 15 years of feedings.

Right: Kathryn Denning when she's not chasing legendary beasts

“Some of the beast legends we explored are very old, some more recent. There are many different versions of these myths and they evoke very different images for different people and in different regions,” says Denning. “That’s the really interesting part, the variations from region to region. What the beast does in the stories speaks more to the culture that believes in it than to the beast itself.” These ancient societies had an encyclopedic knowledge of their natural environment but didn’t necessarily know what was over the distant ridge, and that could lead to unexplained tales of beasts.

At the same time, there is still much “we don’t know about the sea” and “there’s a tremendous delight in thinking we haven’t civilized the whole world yet.” That there might actually be beasts out there that humans haven't gotten a hold of yet. “The idea that there are still things that elude us is delicious,” she says.

Denning is joined on the show by Scott Edwards, a professor of organismic and evolutionary biology and curator of ornithology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University; Stephen Leonard, an adventurer and veterinary surgeon based in Bristol, England; and Francis Manapul, a Philippines-born, Toronto-based comic book artist. Together they explored the remote jungles of Vietnam looking for the Wildman, a giant, hairy, bloodthirsty beast similar to Bigfoot, and the Navajo lands of New Mexico for a giant bird predator said to be the size of a small plane. They travelled to Mongolia’s Altai Mountains searching for the griffin, a massive, legendary creature with the head of an eagle, razor-sharp talons and the body of a lion. They also ventured deep into the primeval forests of Poland to find the truth behind ancient legends of a terrifying, fire-breathing dragon known as Smok.

“When we look at these things that seem exotic, they help us to understand ourselves and other cultures better at the end of the day,” says Denning. She admits it's a little different from some of her other academic work at 91��ɫ, although she was also a part of a documentary that aired in 2007 that looked at the natural history and folklore of vampires. "Tales of the undead are ubiquitous, ancient and always changing," she says, similar to tales about fantastical beasts. Denning hopes viewers of "Beast Legends" will gain a better understanding of animals in their natural environment, as well as other cultures.

Is there any truth to the legends behind these beasts? You’ll have to watch the show to find out.

For more information, visit the "" Web site. The first episode will be the search for the Wildman, followed by the kraken, Dakuwaqa, the griffin, the Navajo bird monster and, in the final episode, Smok the dragon.

The series was covered by the and July 7 via the Canwest News Service:

This is the time of year when young ’uns and oldsters alike gather around the campfire and swap ghost stories – “Bloody bones behind the barn!” – and other tall tales, wrote Canwest News Service July 7. The mythological creatures of the subconscious have a literature all their own. And yet, as the engaging and timely docuseries “Beast Legends” reminds us, in some cultures around the world, mythical beings are not just imaginary, but are believed to exist.

“Beast Legends”, a kind of “Ghost Hunters” for the Beowulf set, follows an eclectic group of experts in their field to far-flung corners of the earth, from the rain-soaked jungles of Vietnam to the mountains of Mongolia.

The experts include 91��ɫ anthropologist Kathryn Denning, a professor in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.

For more information about when the show will be aired, visit the Web site.

By Sandra McLean, YFile writer

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Vanessa Lamb (right), a second-year doctoral candidate in geography, is the 2010 Vivienne Poy Asian Research Award recipient. Her research interests include the politics of the environment and development, feminist political ecology and critical science studies.

Lamb received her master's degree from the University of Wisconsin, where she researched and studied the interdisciplinary understandings of conservation. Prior to attending 91��ɫ, she worked for the Bangkok-based organization TERRA, a regional non-governmental organization (NGO) that works on environmental issues within the Mekong Region. As a doctoral student she has worked as part of the Challenges of Agrarian Transition in Southeast Asia project team.

The award funds will assist Lamb in her dissertation fieldwork during the 2010-2011 academic year. Her research looks at knowledge-making and claim-making practices around resources of the Nu-Salween River, which supports an estimated six million people in China, Burma and Thailand as a source of livelihood and food. She will conduct interviews with local residents, activists, engineers and others connected to a large hydroelectric development project along the river at the Thai-Burma border. Specifically, her research will consider how different knowledges produced about the river interact and influence decision-making processes around development.

The award is named for Canadian Senator Vivienne Poy. It assists a graduate student in fulfilling the fieldwork requirement for the Graduate Diploma in Asian Studies.

Ei Phyu Han (left) and Rae Mitchell are the 2010 YCAR Language Award recipients. Han, a doctoral candidate in geography, will study Thai, while Mitchell, a master's candidate in social & political thought, will use the funding to study Hindi in anticipation of her 2010 fieldwork in India.

Han is examining gender identity formation of Karen refugees from Burma along the Thai-Burma border to learn how it is influenced by different actors and power groups at multiple sites of displacement. Her research aims to demonstrate how identity is influenced by place and therefore shifts during the process of being displaced because it is continually being renegotiated. This research has the potential to help improve resettlement programs, and she hopes it can play a role in future Canadian refugee policy changes.

"Although I am now a Canadian citizen, I migrated to Canada at the age of six from Burma with my family in the aftermath of the brutal repression of peaceful demonstrations in 1988," says Han. "I believe that this project is important not only for the ways that it can influence policy and resettlement program changes, and its engagement and contribution to academic knowledge, but also because it is integral to learning more about the growing humanitarian crisis in Burma."

She completed her coursework and set the foundations for her fieldwork in the summer of 2009 in Chiang Mai, Thailand, by making contacts with NGOs and by taking Thai language courses. The YCAR Language Award will assist in the continuation of these studies. She will begin her fieldwork this month working with the Thailand Burma Border Consortium, Women's Education for Advancement & Employment and the Karen Youth Organization.

Right: Rae Mitchell

Mitchell's research interests include resistance, social movement theory, engaged Buddhism and social anarchism. Her current research focuses on Gandhian perspectives of the body, including the methods utilized by Gandhi to transform his body (and self) from British subject into revolutionary satyagrahi. She's also interested in the ways that Gandhian approaches to social and political transformation are being adapted and utilized by female members of the Mahila Shanti Sena (Women's Peace Force) in Northern India.

She will complete a four-week intensive Hindi language-training course at the Jaipur School of Hindi in Jaipur, Rajasthan. The school is run in affiliation with Shashvat Sansthan, a local NGO working for the welfare of Rajasthan’s tribal-indigenous communities. Mitchell will also be travelling with University of Toronto Professor Reva Joshee and Jill Carr-Harris, a development worker in India, throughout central India for three weeks in October to explore possible research collaboration on Ekta Parishad's struggle for land and forest rights for marginalized and indigenous peoples in India.

Mitchell holds a combined bachelor of arts (BA) in peace studies and anthropology with a minor in religious studies from McMaster University.

The YCAR Language Award was created to support graduate students in fulfilling the language requirement for the Graduate Diploma in Asian Studies and to facilitate awardees master's or doctoral-level research.

Ferdinand Dionisio Caballero (left), a master's candidate in social anthropology, is this year's recipient of the David Wurfel Award. The award will aid him in his fall archival fieldwork in the Philippines where he will focus on the entangled relations between the Catholic Church and the Filipino people.

The David Wurfel Award provides financial support to an honours undergraduate or master's graduate student who intends to conduct thesis research on the topic of Filipino history, culture or society.

Caballero's major research paper will be an anthropological inquiry on religion, colonial subjects, post-colonialism and history. More specifically, he is interested in exploring and understanding the dynamics of power relations between religious institutions and the people.

He holds a BA in anthropology with a specialization in ethnographic studies from Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta.

The award was established in 2006 by Senior YCAR Research Associate David Wurfel. He wanted to contribute to the emergence of a new generation of Filipino leadership that is grounded in the country’s history, culture and public affairs. Wurfel is a Philippine specialist who received his PhD from Cornell University's Southeast Asia Program.

Heather Barnick (right) is the 2010 recipient of the Albert C.W. Chan Foundation Fellowship. A doctoral candidate in the Department of Social Anthropology at 91��ɫ, her current research interests are related to the anthropology of media, digital anthropology, and techno-science with a specific focus on the visual and material cultures of video games and massive multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPGs).

Last month, Barnick began ethnographic fieldwork in Shanghai, China, following the ways in which online role-playing games have become significant sites for the formations of new national and cultural imaginaries in mainland China. Her fieldwork is supported by the Albert C.W. Chan Fellowship and a Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada doctoral scholarship.

This research follows on the heels of a project initiated by China’s General Administration of Press & Publication (GAPP) to encourage the production of 100 domestically produced MMORPGs. The narratives and imagery integrated into games developed under GAPP’s initiative frequently make use of famous fictional stories, such as the Journey to the West, and historical battles, such as Genghis Khan’s exploits and the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Focusing on the perspectives of youth from Shanghai, Barnick’s research will examine how these adapted histories come to have new meanings for life in the present. The primary goal is to understand how notions of national and cultural belongings and identities are continuously formed, expressed and re-imagined by Shanghai youth through their participation in MMORPGs produced in China.

Barnick earned a BA in sociology and anthropology from the University of Prince Edward Island and a MA in social and cultural anthropology from Concordia University.

The Albert C.W. Chan Foundation Fellowship was established by the Albert C.W. Chan Foundation to encourage and assist 91��ɫ graduate students to conduct field research in East and/or Southeast Asia and was made possible through the support of the Albert C. W. Chan family.

Adnan Amin (left) was selected from a strong group of graduate and undergraduate applicants to represent 91��ɫ at the Global Initiatives Symposium in Taipei next month. This opportunity is provided by the government of the Republic of China (Taiwan).

Amin's winning essay, “When East Meets West: A Personal Essay on Intersections of North American and East Asian Education”, reflected on his experiences as an English as a second language (ESL) teacher in Taiwan.

Last year, Amin graduated from 91��ɫ with an honours double major degree in English and history, completed his concurrent bachelor of education degree, and held a position as student senator for the Faculty of Education Students' Association. Amin has also held an international internship in the English Department of the Hong Kong Institute of Education and taught ESL in Taiwan. He is currently pursing his master of education degree at 91��ɫ.

Amin's research interests are in teaching and learning strategies, immigrant experiences, English language learning and digital media technology. He currently works as a school settlement worker in Toronto high schools where he helps newcomer students and families with settlement needs.

The Global Initiatives Symposium will be held at the National Taiwan University in Taipei, Taiwan, from July 12 to 16. It will bring together emergent leaders from around the world to discuss critical global issues. The topic for 2010 is The Emergence of New Giants: Evolution or Revolution. Participants will also take part in several days of cultural tours in Taiwan following the symposium.

Amin’s opportunity to represent 91��ɫ at the symposium was made possible by the Taipei Economic & Cultural Office and the government of the Republic of China (Taiwan).

For more information on any of the awards, visit the YCAR Web site.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Right: Sathima Bea Benjamin

Sathima’s Windsong traces Benjamin’s story as it unfolds through her own reflections and reminiscence and is woven together with the music she has created. It also includes the reflections of five people who know her work and the milieu which shaped it.

In her flat in the Chelsea Hotel in New 91��ɫ, where she has lived for 32 years, Benjamin patches together her journeys, both literal and figurative. Those journeys have taken her from apartheid South Africa and “the pattern of brokenness” she grew up in to Europe where a chance meeting and recording with Duke Ellington took place. From there, she was on to New 91��ɫ where she started afresh and set up her own record company.

Left: Daniel Yon

“As it moves back and forth between Cape Town and New 91��ɫ, to the lyrics and rhythm of her music, it becomes, much like the title of her haunting song Windsong, a reflection on history, time and place, on apartheid, anti-apartheid and their legacies, as well as the passionate questions of memory, displacement and belonging,” says Yon.

This is not Yon’s first effort at making an ethnographic film. “In fact, it continues some of the themes and concerns of an earlier film, (2007), to do with memory, place, belonging, travel, identity. The qualities of Sathima Benjamin's music attracted my attention and my conversations with her revealed a fascinating history of ‘journeys',” he says.

Right: Sathima Bea Benjamin performing

The film will screen from 3:30 to 5:30pm at the Nat Taylor Cinema, N102 Ross Building., Keele campus. After the preview screening, a wine and cheese reception will follow in the Founders Senior Common Room, 305 Founders College, Keele campus. Admission to the film is free.

RSVP by Tuesday, April 20, to Emily Tjimos, administrative assistant in the Faculty of Education, at etjimos@edu.yorku.ca or at 416-736-2100 ext. 66301.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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